They shook hands again, lightly and without emphasis, and Avery picked up his valise and moved off down the empty road. For a long time Adam watched him, his jaunty figure silhouetted against the fading light that lay on the dripping landscape. Then, thoughtfully, he stamped out the dying embers of the fire and unhitched the horses, climbing into the box and turning the waggon south. Within minutes the dusk and mist closed in and he settled back in the box, letting the Clydesdales set their own pace for home.
SORTIE TORRENTIELLE:
1864–1865
One
1
NOTWITHSTANDING HIS ULTIMATE DISENCHANTMENT WITH THE PROFESSION, Adam Swann had been a good soldier. He had imbibed a certain number of sound military precepts and carried them into commercial life where they sometimes served him well, without him being more than half aware of the fact.
They were to serve him now, when he acknowledged to himself that he was being edged into a corner from which it would need more than courage and luck to escape.
Tybalt's spring budget was even more depressing than he had anticipated. Hiding among its neat, inter-related columns of figures were elements of stress that would have worried him if he had still been secured by Avery's credit. As it was, with the balance of the Tryst purchase money due in under three months, the prospect of regaining the initiative appeared hopeless. He was not even sure how he could survive at all without drastic contraction right across the board.
There was no shortage of contracts, and money continued to flow in at a steady and even an increasing rate. Of the twelve districts, eight were showing a profit and two others were breaking even. Only Catesby, in the Polygon, was frozen into immobility by the continuing cotton famine, whereas the Southern Pickings still needed time to establish itself. The need was not increased turnover but a strong injection of fresh capital to replace worn-out teams and waggons and also to meet the flood of quarterly rents on depot premises, stables, and warehouse space. And all the time, like a boulder poised on a hillside above him, was the balance of the money due to be paid over to Conyer's attorneys.
The problem, as he saw it, was both strategical and tactical. The strategic object was clearly defined—to hold on to the ownership of Tryst and avoid wholesale contraction of the network. The tactical remedies that presented themselves were more devious, and after studying Tybalt's breakdown figures he did precisely what he would have done faced with a similar situation in the field. He made a series of resolute sallies, aimed at catching the enemy off balance and deceiving him as regards strength and aggressiveness. The first of these carried him into the camp of Conyer's attorneys, Messrs. Stock, Frithleston & Stock, in St. Paul's Churchyard.
He was received, in the absence of the older partners, by young Aubrey Stock, recently down from Cambridge, a competent pink-cheeked, unpretentious young man, who looked more like a cheerful subaltern than a lawyer, and Adam, sensing that he was more open to compromise than his dry-as-dust father or asthmatic uncle, made up his mind on the spot to come straight to the point. He said, flatly, “I can’t find the balance for Tryst, or not without selling half my business, and I’m disinclined to do that. It wouldn’t be in your true interests or mine, Mr. Stock.”
The young man did not recoil, as his father would certainly have done but merely looked solemn, and drummed his long fingers on the blotter, staring down at a brass pentray. He seemed to think hard for a moment and then said, with a glance at the document before him, “The balance is due on 1st January. We’ve made plans to invest it on Mr. Conyer's behalf. It's to go into a Trust Fund for his heirs.”
“I don’t give a damn about that,” Adam told him, “and I’m not bilking from choice. A partner of mine squandered our reserve capital and skipped the country. As I see it you’ve three alternatives. To hold fast to the contract and make me bankrupt. To return the initial four thousand I’ve already paid, less the forfeited deposit, or to advance the completion date and get your money in quarterly instalments. Even if you do that I feel bound to warn you I shall have great difficulty in meeting them. There's one other possibility. You could find me a buyer to take it off my hands. In that case I should have to sell at a loss and would expect to, so long as it wasn’t a staggering loss. If it was I’d fight.”
Stock said, cautiously, “You would prefer that? Providing it could be done?”
“No, I should prefer to do my utmost to keep up the instalments and eventually clear what remained in a lump sum.”
The lawyer sucked his pink cheeks and gave the pentray his dedicated attention.
“Taking that alternative, Mr. Swann. How long would it stand over? Approximately, that is.”
Adam took out Tybalt's estimates and passed them across the desk.
“I didn’t come here to bluff my way out of a difficult situation. This was my financial position at nine a.m. this morning.”
Stock took the papers and ran his eye over them. It was, Adam noted, a very cool and judicious eye, despite the man's youth and inexperience. He had the impression that Stock Junior was very conscious of being the new broom about the office and had far less hidebound notions concerning the handling of money and property that those practised by preceding generations of Stocks and Frithlestons. In spite of his conventional frock coat and outward sobriety there was a hint of the speculator about him.
“A little worrying, Mr. Swann,” was his comment, and Adam said, sharply, “I’ll admit to that, but the business is sound enough. If you won’t take my word for it ask around the City.”
“I’ll take your word for it, Mr. Swann. You were recommended to me as an exceptionally enterprising man and we might even have something in common. Say a predisposition to examine new ideas, without rejecting them out of hand and reverting to rule of thumb.”
Adam accepted this as a hopeful sign. “It's encouraging to hear that from the lips of an attorney. Most of them are still quoting precedents in use when we lost the American colonies.”
“Ah, yes,” said the young man, “but we’ve acquired another Empire since then, I’m told,” and he actually smiled, although it seemed to hurt a little. “Suppose I persuaded my father and uncle to extend the completion date six months, making it 30th June? Would that help?”
“Not enough. I might find half the money by then but if I’m to stay in business on the scale I practise I need the amount I owe you for renewals and quarter-rents, to say nothing of wages. I don’t handle large sums. My network pays off in trickles, and my policy has been to plough profit into fresh territory. It may not be your way of doing business but it's the only way that makes sense to me. A static business is half-dead to my way of thinking.”
“I told my father that only last week,” Stock said, surprisingly, “and in almost identical terms. The trouble is, of course, getting them to regard it as anything more than ’Varsity brag. Suppose I went a step further? Suppose I could draft an instalment plan, spread over two to three years? You would have to pay interest and that would add to your liabilities.”
“It would also give me a breathing space and that's what I need. Talk your principal into agreeing to that and I’ll be uncommonly obliged to you, Mr. Stock.”
The young man was silent for a moment, nibbling his pen. It was curious, Adam reflected, but against all probabilities there was something about him that recalled Avery. You could see the gambler at work inside his narrow head.
He said, at length, “These lawyers your partner used. Are you tied to them in any way?”
“Shadwell and Dowse? No, I’m not. As a matter of fact I’ve never been impressed by them. They move too slowly for my taste, almost as slow as your firm without the merit of being reputable.”
“You mustn’t expect me to slander fellow professionals,” Stock said, with another smile, “but things get about you know, especially at chop-houses where lawyers foregather. This partner of yours skipped, you say. Did Mr. Shadwell or Mr. Dowse show much surprise?”
“I haven’t paid them the compliment
of discussing his exit with them,” Adam replied, but Stock was not disposed to let it rest at that. He said, “I take it he was the man who introduced you to them?”
“That's so, but I never had much to do with them. I give lawyers a very wide berth when I can.”
“But a concern as large and as growing as yours, you must get involved in litigation of one sort or another from time to time?”
Adam began to see the drift of the conversation so he said, obliquely, “There are contracts to be vetted, and premises to be conveyed. Sometimes we need to insure high-quality goods and take out standing cover against accidents.”
Stock said, “Give me twenty-four hours, Mr. Swann. I think something might be worked out. Suppose you let me give you luncheon tomorrow. I reserve a table at The Mitre on weekdays and the game pie there is excellent.”
“I’d be happy to do that,” said Adam, and went out feeling a good deal more hopeful than when he had entered.
The upshot of the next meeting was the respite Adam sought. Over their game pie young Stock said, leisurely, “How about a two-year extension at six per cent, Mr. Swann? Too steep for you?”
“It's near-robbery but I won’t quarrel with it for I’ve no real alternative,” Adam told him but then Stock succeeded in surprising him yet again. “Would you think it impertinent of me if I asked to look around H.Q.? I’ve always been interested in haulage and I’m curious about your trademark. It's a play on your name, I take it?”
Adam told him he was welcome to examine the yard and explained the significance of the trademark and how it came into being. By the time he had shown the lawyer round the Bermondsey headquarters he had formed a considerable liking for him, seeing him as a younger edition of himself, about the time he was contemplating resignation from the Company's service. It was not until they were on the point of parting, however, that Stock revealed the underlying reason for his interest. He said, unequivocally, “That six per cent, Mr. Swann. I realise you’re not a company, and it's demonstrably clear that you’re a keen individualist, but suppose a man like me wanted a flutter? Would my undertaking to take care of that interest over the period make me a minor shareholder, with prospects but no say in policy? Six per cent on seven thousand over two years…one hundred and sixty pound short of the round sum of one thousand?”
“There's nothing wrong with your mental arithmetic,” said Adam and Mr. Stock said that there did not seem to be much wrong with his own.
“Would that mean I’m under an obligation to bring my legal business to Stock, Frithleston and Stock?”
“Certainly not, but it might be in your interests to think about it, Mr. Swann.”
Adam said, “I’m not inclined to reject any helping hand just now, Mr. Stock, and something tells me we think alike on essentials. Draw up something along the lines of what you’ve put forward and I’ll sign it without even reading it. I flatter myself I can recognise a man who keeps abreast of the times, even if he is a lawyer.”
And so it was arranged, and although the boulder remained poised it was underpinned, to a great extent, by the good offices of the astute Mr. Stock, although Adam would have wagered all the money involved in the transaction that this was an extremely private investment on his part and that Stock Senior, to say nothing of the Frithlestons, would have to console themselves with the thought that the respite meant the purchaser was paying almost a thousand pounds over the odds for their indulgence.
The pressure had eased slightly but his personal account remained empty whereas Tybalt's estimate of income during the next twelve months fell far short of what was required. It was now that he took the head clerk into his full confidence, admitting his reliance upon Avery's finance, and the reason why it was useless to look in that direction for money to tide them over the next year, or the year after that. Tybalt made no attempt to hide the fact that the absence of reserves appalled him. He said, massaging his bald head, as though to help it absorb the truth, “We must find a partner, someone of substance from among our clients. We’re well established now, Mr. Swann, and there must be people willing to invest in a firm as reputable as ours,” but suddenly he broke off, warned by the frown on Adam's face, and concluded, lamely, “You don’t intend to shed some of the load, sir?”
“Not an ounce of it,” Adam told him, “for I built this with my own hands and little else. Mr. Avery had almost nothing to do with the planning of it and never did stand to lose money of his own. Now that he's run off I’m free to develop any way I like. The one compensation this mess has brought with it is complete independence, for I don’t count that eight hundred and forty young Stock has just invested. God damn it, man, don’t you realise that if we called on some well-heeled merchant to tide us over we should end up working for him? A glance at that budget would give any big investor the right to call the tune.”
Tybalt groaned and scanned the columns in front of him. Watching him Adam reminded himself that he was not equipped to deal with a crisis and the clerk was man enough to admit it. He said, “Very well, Mr. Swann. If you won’t contract by closing down some of the depots, and you won’t call on fresh capital, I’m not qualified to advise you. But Mr. Keate is. He told me yesterday that of the four hundred horses in service a third are due to be retired early next year, and another third twelve months later. He's even shown me the age checks, and according to him most of the Clydesdales were more than halfway through their working span when he bought them, and we got them cheap on that account. We’ve been working them hard now for five years plus. I daresay one can give or take a year in the case of a few of them but only at the cost of sacrificing our principal selling point, speed. At all events, that's his view and I promised him I would put it to you.”
“That's what I pay you for,” growled Adam. “What else have you to say?”
Tybalt went on, red in the face, “Over a hundred new waggons are needed and twelve quarter-rents are due on stables and warehouses. You’ll need to find something in the region of five thousand by this day twelvemonth. How do you propose to do it? By mortgaging Tryst?”
“You can’t mortgage what you haven’t paid for. I’ve got a better idea. When you’re surrounded, and expect an attack, the manual recommends a breakout in force and feints on other sectors, what the French call a sortie torrentielle. These weekly conferences we have, the departmental pow-wows within our parish, would you say they have been productive?”
“Very much so,” Tybalt said, “you know I’ve always approved of them.”
“What actually emerges from them?”
Tybalt looked at him doubtfully, as though he had a strong suspicion his leg was being pulled. “They clear the air. Each of us knows what the others are doing. There is another aspect too…I don’t know how to amplify that without seeming to take a liberty, sir.”
“You wouldn’t have the smallest idea how to take a liberty, Tybalt.”
“Then put it this way, sir. They give subordinates like Mr. Keate, myself, and the resident farrier and carpenter, a sense of…well…of being consulted, sir, of being something more than hired hands.”
“That's precisely what I’m driving at. We call a network conference right here at headquarters and lay the facts before everyone concerned.”
The finality of the suggestion startled the clerk. “You don’t mind these figures becoming generally known, sir?”
“If I continued to work used-up teams and run waggons that spend half their time in the repair sheds every man on the pay-roll will draw his own conclusions, and those conclusions won’t be flattering to me or the firm. Convene a general meeting here on Friday, and say I’ll pay for return fares and an overnight stay in London. Meantime I’m going to see Blunderstone about new waggons, then McSawney about fresh teams, bought on credit.”
He stalked out of the tower, leaving Tybalt stuttering, and buttoning his topcoat set off towards the river at a fast walk.
It was raining, and winter was marching on the city from the east but he had never fou
nd the interior of a cab conducive to thought, and it crossed his mind that he ought to keep a saddle horse in the yard for rapid movement through streets where the traffic situation was going from bad to worse, and there were sometimes blocks a mile long in the busiest periods of the day. It occurred to him then that, notwithstanding the gridiron, the pace of the new age inside the big centres of population was still regulated by the speed of a horse, for even as recently as twenty years ago there had never been cities as populous as this, where villages, orchards, and stubble fields were being devoured at the rate of acres a week. What would happen, he wondered, if London, and all the rival Londons in the Midlands and North, continued to grow at this pace, and people were edged out of the heart of them to make room for more and more offices, factories, warehouses, and docks? The London suburbs already lapped halfway across Middlesex and were nibbling the farmlands of Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent, Surrey, and Berkshire. Soon, in his lifetime perhaps, it would take a man days to walk the diameter of the capital and perhaps a week to work his way round the circumference. With only an odd glimpse of cherry-garden and cornfield. Change. Movement. Speed. Money. Expansion. Innovation. These were the factors upon which one had to base one's calculations today if one was determined to remain in the swim, and he thought it surprising that this was not generally accepted by a majority of Englishmen. Most of whom were as conservative as their pastoral ancestors. There had been that one big leap forward a generation ago, but by now the sons of the Stephensons and the Brunels had absorbed it and settled on an even course, as though England had always been a workshop with an insatiable hunger for new markets overseas. Men, and women too, thought in terms of hardware and cotton instead of in terms of turnips and the next hay crop, but that was the only concession they made to the century. They still put their trust in eighteenth-century legislation and the navy and at base the social structure of the nation was still rooted in the petty squire and the arrogant politician, typified by Palmerston, who thought of Trafalgar and Waterloo as last week's triumphs.
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